Carlos Nobre has made outstanding contributions within each and every Ambassador Award category, from societal benefit and service to the Earth and space science community to scientific leadership and promotion of the talent/career pool. In this regard he truly embodies what it means to be recognized as an AGU ambassador. Professor Nobre is arguably the world’s leading authority on the human impact on the Amazonian ecosystem. He speaks from a position of authority on the topic that blends with his passion and sincerity for the problem in a way that is very persuasive. He is equally comfortable speaking at the annual AGU meeting and to heads of state, corporate titans and the Indigenous tribes of the Amazon.

In addition to his own scholarly achievements and research leadership, it is worth noting Professor Nobre’s vision and efforts to develop several important organizations and institutions in Brazil. In the 1990s he was the guiding force behind the development of the Center for Weather Forecasting and Climate Studies within Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), and in the early 2000s he initiated the Center for Earth System Science at INPE; in the early part of the 2010s Carlos created the National Center for Monitoring and Alerts of Natural Disasters within the Ministry of Science and Technology, and most recently, he started the Amazon Third Way Initiative/Amazônia 4.0 project in support of sustaining Brazil’s tropical forests. Separately, these organizations continue to thrive and represent important individual institutions unto themselves, but they also have common attributes that span research, operations, resilience and sustainability for Brazil and the planet at large.

Another common thread running through Carlos’ career has been his dedication to capacity building and mentoring of young scientists internationally with an emphasis on those from Central and South America. Lastly, it is worth noting the manner in which Carlos has served as an ambassador and voice for the Global South. As a mentor he conveys the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities of what it means to be an early-career environmental scientist in today’s Global South, another timely example of which is his present service on the AGU Advisory Board for an Ethical Framework for Climate Intervention Research. At a time when a number of organizations in the Global North are advocating for experimentation and research to manage solar radiation, it is essential that the concerns, potential impacts and implications for the Global South have equal representation. Who better to do this than Carlos Nobre.

— Antonio J. Busalacchi
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research
Boulder, Colorado

— Soroosh Sorooshian
University of California, Irvine
Irvine, California

I considered very correct the formal citation that my citationist has produced. I just request a small correction about the date that I created the Earth System Science Research Center at Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research. I think that I would also highlight that an important scientific contribution I have made throughout my scientific career is related to the scientific articles published in 1990 (Science) and 1991 (Journal of Climate) indicating that large-scale deforestation in the Amazon would cause the whole climate envelope over the southern Amazon to become compatible with tropical savannas and no longer be able to maintain the Amazon forest. We call it the hypothesis of “savannization.” Over several decades, I continued with such research and demonstrated in an article in 2016 (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America) that if deforestation exceeds 20% and global warming exceeds 2.5°C, more than 50% of the Amazon forest would turn into a degraded open-canopy ecosystem. In the mid-1990s I started leading conversations with Amazonian, U.S., European and U.K. scientists to create a field experiment all over the Amazon. By the end of 1998, we created the Large-Scale Biosphere-Atmosphere Experiment in Amazonia (LBA Experiment), and I was its program scientist from that time through 2004. That experiment still exists today, and it has engaged hundreds and hundreds of scientists from most Amazonian countries and from the United States, Europe and United Kingdom. More than 1,200 graduate students finished their theses with data from the LBA Experiment, and more than 2,000 scientific articles have been published to date. It set more than 25 sites for field experiments in the forest, degraded pasture and tropical savannas. It brought in a large number of research aircraft to measure all the atmospheric components. This experiment has demonstrated that the southern-southeastern Amazon is very close to the tipping point of savannization. From 2011 to mid-2016, I did some work in Brasília in Federal Government positions, initially as Secretary of Science and Development Policies in the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (2011-2014) and president of the postgraduate education agency Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES; 2015 to mid-2016). I am a foreign member of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States and of the Royal Society of the United Kingdom. I am also a member of Brazil’s Academy of Science and the Global Academy of Science.I was international secretary of AGU (2019-2020).— Carlos Nobre, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil